Cairns - Mike Ball Dive Expedition

My flight left at 1 pm from Alice Springs to Ayer's Rock airport, where I changed flight to Cairns. I sat beside a guy named Teal from Oregon, USA. We chatted the whole way and turns out, he's planning on doing some diving as well. When we got to the arrival terminal in Cairns, I started chatted to a man named Adrian from Tasmania while waiting for our luggage. We all got a cab into town together and stayed at the same hostel, Cairns Central YHA. We all got to stay in the same room together as well. The hostel was really nice, very clean and spacious. Nice pool as well.

We all went out to dinner and then went back to our dorm to tell stories, laugh and sleep.

In the morning, we went out for breakfast at the Lillypad, which came highly recommended. Food was alright, I had french toast. But the maple syrup isn't as good as home.

From there, we went to the shopping centre to cool down and I bought 2 books from a book sale ($5 each, really cheap here!) and the boys got coffee. Then, we went to a dive shop, Pro Dive, to ask about outer reef or northern reef dive trips. She gave us a bunch of brochures and some recommendations. 3 companies went up to Cod Hole (which is on my wish list) and one even had a sale on as it was leaving the next day so had standby prices. $600 off! She said Mike Ball Dive Expedition was amazing and who everyone at her shop tries to volunteer with on their days off. A great company, but also has permits to go to certain areas on the reefs that no other company can go. So, with all our brochures, we headed down to the lagoon for planning and swimming. After hours of reading and indecision, both Teal and I decided on the 4 night liveaboard coral sea dive with Mike Ball Dive Expedition. It was well out of my budget, but a dive of a lifetime. It went to the best dive spots in all of the Great Barrier Reef. Plus, it was the cheapest I'd ever get it! Adrian doesn't dive, so he booked a snorkel trip with Silverswift (the company I went with the first time) and planned his Cape Tribulation and Kuranda trip, with a few suggestions from me :)

We went off to the shops to book our trips and then the boys got take out for dinner. I went to rent an underwater camera at Wetrez and then cooked some instant noodles for dinner. Hmmmm, backpacker food. They also got a bottle of vodka so we could celebrate. With 3 glasses each, it was all gone. We swam in the pool at the hostel, listened to music then retired to our dorm where Teal passed out and Adrian showed me his photos. He's a photographer. Had some great stuff!

Adrian said goodbye in the morning, as he set off for snorkeling and Teal and I repacked our bags so we only took what we needed for our trip. We checked out and put our bags in storage at Pro Dive since that's where we booked our trip and I rented my dive gear from them. Then we walked to the Mike Ball shop to check in, fill out paperwork and give them our luggage. We were to meet up at 4:30 pm for dinner and a "met the group" social so Teal and I spent the afternoon walking around town.

The humidity and heat really started itching my rash, so I tried to stay in the shade. I hoped that the salt water would dry it out on the trip.

We met up for the social, and from there went to our boat "spoilsport." We all went straight to our rooms to ensure our luggage was all there then went upstairs to the lounge for a briefing and introductory. Tea, coffee and biscuits were available all the time in the lounge. That was nice.

As our boat headed out for the long trip north of the coast, we spent the evening getting to know one another and Lawrence, the staff photographer, did a free workshop on underwater photography so we had an idea of what we were doing with our camera. I learned upward angles are best, always get close to your subject rather that zooming in and either use a red filter or white balance for colour or the flash with a diffuser. Never to use flash and red filter! My camera had a red filter, so I was set!

We all had an early night since we had a 6 am start.

Our coordinator, Kerin, walked up and down the hallways yelling, "Good Morning! Wakey Wakey!" Then the hand held bell would ring to let us now breakfast was served. We had a traditional breakfast of eggs, bacon, toast, tomatoes, mushrooms and hashbrowns. After eating, we got our daily plan of dives and the timeline. We'd get a brief of the dive site on the dive deck before each dive so we knew where we were going, what the conditions were like, any hazards in the area, any hot spots for neat marine life and the layout.

Our first dive was at Challenger Bay (GBR #10) off Lizard Island near Cod Hole. Teal was my diving buddy for the trip. We had the option of either going on our own, or follow a dive master as there was one going in the water for every trip. Except, for our first dive. Everyone was with a dive master so they could go over a few basics to make sure your comfortable. For example, sharing air if your buddy runs out, buoyancy control (so not to damage any coral, they take this quite seriously, which is very good) or airing out your mask in case water gets in it.

I decided to forgo the 5mm wetsuit, seeing how the water temperature is 29 C and just wore a stingers suit. And I'm glad I did. There was a bit of a currant and so many stingers in the water! Lots of small baby jellyfish that you could see on the decent, but tons of long tentacles floating around in the water. And yes, they still sting even when not connected to a jellyfish. They really are the zombies of the sea. What else do you know that can still hurt you when it's dead or just a floating body part?!

Luckily, the stinging would last about 80 secs then disappear. No deadly jellyfish here. Whew! I could even feel them through my suit, but not as bad as on my bare skin. Once at the bottom, we had a White Tip Reef Shark (WTRS) swimming nearby. As I watched him, I spotted a lionfish on a small coral bed. I was taking pictures when the coral changed colour to my right. As I looked closer, it turned out to be an octopus! So cool! And apparently rare to see. A cod kept circling the coral and scaring it back into the hole, but each time it left, it would try to come out. Really neat to see it blend in to camouflage.

We set out to our next sight, Cod Hole. I was really excited about this one. Supposed to be massive cod here. And was there ever! The potato cod where huge! Half the size of me, from my pointed toes to my waist, roughly. Super cool. They eat other fish and have no trouble telling a reef shark to buzz off. So neat! The visibility here was great and I got some really neat photos of an anemone fish and parrotfish. Pretty much on every dive, we saw all kinds of pufferfish, danselfish, angelfish, parrotfish, butterflyfish and anemone fish.

We had lunch and a small break before we were at our next site, the Snake Pit. It was a seafood lunch with prawns, fish, oysters and some other crustacean, but luckily, buns, fruit and salad. So light lunch for me!

Again, this was like the first dive, with lots of stingers, a slight to moderate currant and poor visibility. We did see a couple Olive Green sea snakes (yes, very poisonous, but extremely rare to get bit by one. They're very docile) and shrimp. Our night dive was at this location as well. But seeing how the visibility was poor (and stingers!), I thought since this would be my first night dive, I'll skip it and wait for tomorrow's where there's supposed to be better conditions. I haven't done a multi-dive trip before and didn't want to tucker myself out to quickly. So 3 dives my first day was good. I enjoyed the orange sunset instead.

We had dinner at 8:30 pm of salad, chicken, vegetables, rice, beef and fresh buns followed by tiramisu for dessert. The food was amazing! Our cook, Kari was great! She fed us really well!

After our excitement of our first day, we headed to our beds for a good nights sleep, while captain Patrick drove us to Osprey Reef for the remainder of our dives.

Another wake up call and a small breakfast of fruit, cereal and yogurt. Our pre-dive breaky. Our first dive was at Fairy Groth. I saw my first Grey shark here. More Giant clams and the usual fish. The visibility was great all around Osprey Reef. It was a great location.

We had second breakfast of the traditional sort then dove Admiralty Anchor, twice. More WTRS, clams, and tropical fish. The corals on this trip where fanominal! So colourful and large. A lot of the places had drop offs where you go along the wall and see all kinds of fans and corals (and sharks). Also neat tunnels and trenches to go through.

Next, we had lunch with variety of deli meats, cheeses and olives, buns, fruit and salad.

After digestion, under the water again at North Horn for our shark feed! We all descended around a coral wall where there was ledge we could sit on. It felt like a concert. We sat in a semi circle with an outcrop of a flat coral bed where they has a metal garbage can with a lid on it. A buoy was tied to the lid so that when the rope tie was released, the lid would float up along with a bunch of tuna heads on a line. The can was on a line as well so Kerin could swim with it a bring it closer to us, which of course, gets the sharks closer.

Once we were all settled, you could see the sharks coming in. There were Silver Tips, Greys, WTRS and even Potato Cod. Hoping a hammerhead would come, but no such luck. Not sure how many sharks there were, but around 20. It was really cool! They'd swim right up to us. If you reached out, you could touch one! Of course, we kept our hands to ourselves. It was funny seeing the Potato Cod get in there with not a care in the world. They just pushed the sharks out of the way to get a morsel of food.

The suckerfish attached to the sharks would sneak in bites as well. One White Tip somehow got his head under the lid before it opened to try to get at the fish. Looked like he got stuck with all that thrashing, so Kerin just grabbed his tail and yanked him out and shook his finger at him. So funny!

Then they released the lid at they all went crazy! A huge feeding frenzy! They moved so fast and grabbed the head, whipping, turning and spinning around tearing it off the line. Wow! Glad I wasn't a tuna head right then! Lol.

Once all the food was gone, they hung around for a few minutes then started to swim away. We were allowed to swim freely and find any teeth that they may have lost as souvenirs.

We had a little break and went back to Admirals Anchor for our night dive. We all got glow sticks on tour tanks to identify our buddy and a flashlight. We weren't to shine the light on sleeping fish as it would scare them and they'd leave the safety of their bed to become easy picking for predators. There were green eyes everywhere as the reef shrimp, reef lobster and crabs came out. We even saw a moray eel. Many Bumphead Parrotfish (yes, they're big with big foreheads) were in the same spot resting. The parrotfish have a mucous seal around their mouth when they sleep. Fascinating, but gross! We also saw a slipper lobster. That was neat. We had to look that one up, it looked prehistoric. Sorry, no night photos. Just thought I'd focus on the dive.

We all had an Australian dinner with kangaroo, sausages, beef and potato, vegetables, buns, fruit and salad. Delicious. A white cake made with fruit and whipping cream was dessert. But, I couldn't eat it with all the dinner.

We spent the evening socializing and singing with our captain as he played a few songs on the guitar. We even got to dance one called Amongst the Gum Trees! An Ozzie Favorite! Too Fun! Man, these people were great! The staff were over the top and my dive buddies were awesome! Everyone got along and we were all like family! Just like my Ayre's rock tour. I couldn't be happier. Exhausted from 5 dives for the day, but happy ;)

We ended the night with a photo competition. We submitted 3 photos and Lawrence would chose a winner depending on his opinion and the cheers of the crowd. 2 of the 3 photos in the finals were mine. Pretty good odds, and guess what? I actually one! I think that's the first time I won anything! Yay! No prize though. My photo will go in with all the other trip winners this month and then another draw is done for a winner for the month. Then, out of all the monthly winners, an annual winner is chosen and they get the big prize of a free dive trip. I don't think I'll win that one, but I was happy with the little bout of glory that shined on me:)

Our morning dive, after the small breaky, was at the Fast Eddies. More of the same. Then pancake breakfast with bacon and hashbrowns. An hour to digest and back in the water at Halfway. Saw some Brittlestars, a nudibranch and many Spotted Garden Eels.

Our last dive site was at False Entrance. We had time to do 2 dives, but I did 1 and a snorkel. My body was tired. Lots of Grey sharks and WTRS here. One grey was getting attacked by a school of Trevally, lol. They're very territorial. Some of the trenches had strong currants and I'm glad it was like a maze because Teal and I could turn the next corner and get out of the currant. It was tiring. We had a great time though.

We had a snack of fruits and biscuits and headed to Lizard Island where we had to say goodbye to the spoilsport and the crew.

We had about 45 mins to walk around the island before catching a flight back to Cairns. We went to a lookout point on the island and saw a Goanna along the way. Moving very s-l-o-w-l-y.

The flight was very scenic, flying low over the reefs at 600 ft. We even saw Endeavor Reef were Captain Cook ran aground and can see the old ship, Emily Wreck.

Then, a shuttle drove us back to our accommodation. *Sigh*, it was so hard to say goodbye. It really was a trip of a lifetime.

Teal was staying another night at the YHA, going to Kuranda for the day and flying home the next day. I said goodbye, and went to Travel Backpackers on the esplanade to save money. $17/night there. One of the woman on my trip, Jill from England, stayed there as well so we planned to have dinner together.

I spent the afternoon dropping off my dive gear, picking up my luggage, returning my camera so I could get the photos on DVD and a small nap.

I found Jill at the lagoon, and with our dinner vouchers in hand, we went to P.J O'Briens Pub for our $5 dinner and drink. Good deal!

Today, I'm in the air conditioned mall booking my bus to Rainbow Beach to see the coloured sands. I leave tomorrow at 7:45 am and it's a 25 hour ride! Ugh! Hope I sleep! Jill and I are having dinner again, along with Chirag from England as well. He's was also on our trip and was staying at another hostel. We bumped into him in town and are meeting up at 7 pm to eat. One last goodbye to Cairns!